2011 was a big year for manga, with a new publisher (Kodansha Comics), the return of Sailor Moon, the demise of Tokyopop, and a host of other events. But the biggest story of the year, one that stretched across almost all publishers, was the adoption of digital platforms for manga.
Manga publishers have been slower than others to make the move from paper to pixels, in part because Japanese licensors tightly control the way manga was published and until recently, they weren't interested in digital rights. That situation has been changing over the past few years, and 2011 was the year that manga went digital in a big way.
Viz launches new platforms and digital Shonen Jump: Viz Media led the way with its iPad app, which was announced in late 2010. Right from the start, they put flagship series such as Naruto on the app and charged $4.99 per volume, about half the price of a current print volume. They continued to add both new volumes and new platforms throughout 2011, making their digital manga available via the iPhone/iPod Touch, their own web store, and the Nook (Barnes & Noble's e-reader). Read More...
